The Marion Zimmer Bradley Science Fiction Read online

  Some memories were triumphant. Some were humorous in Adric’s cynical mind. Some were terrible beyond guessing—for Adric had not counted cost, and even he shuddered from the price the Dreamer had exacted.

  Then, to this wilful and wild man, something had happened. I had no idea what; Karamy had reached that far back and blurred, though not entirely erased, my memory. It had something to do with a blond boy’s face, lifted in incredulous terror—or joy; and a fleeing form, veiled, that retreated down the long corridor of my mind, averting its face as I followed. Whatever had happened, it had come when Adric was sick with blood and horror, when he was surfeited, even if momentarily, with conquest, and sickened at the price the Dreamer extorted. The power, forced through the mind of the Dreamer, called for energy; kinetic energy, available from one source and one only. Adric had fed the Dreamer with that power. For a while.

  One day, as a whim, I had redeemed a young woman slave—then the vagueness came and choked me. I might think; I might burst my brain, but so far and no farther my memories would carry me. I could not force memory of that chain of events. But after that, Adric’s reign had collapsed like the unstable arch it had been. His armies scattered, and he had shut himself up or been imprisoned in his Tower; his memories had been stolen and he had gone, or been sent, spinning along a time line forward, or perhaps back, until somewhere in the abyss of time he touched Mike Kenscott.

  It had been then, perhaps, that Adric had escaped. He had reached, drawn Mike Kenscott back—and switched the two. It was a perfect escape from a life Adric had come to hate.

  But I was Adric. There was an explanation for that, too. The physical body could not make the transit in time. I had Adric’s body; the convolutions of his brain, the synaptic links of habit. His memory banks. Only the Ego, the super-imposed pattern of the conscious identity, insisted I was Mike Kenscott. In Adric’s body, the old patterns ruled, and to all intents and purposes, I was Adric. And back in my own time, I thought, Adric was living in my body—living Mike Kenscott’s life, going through the motions, with only the same queer lapses I was making here. And after a while, even these would stop. I was wholly trapped. Here, living Adric’s life, the part of me that was Adric would grow stronger and stronger till—he?—unseated the other identity wholly. And he, in my body? Andy, I thought with a wild swift fear, what will he do to Andy?

  Nothing. He could not hurt Andy—not in my pattern—any more than I could hate Evarin. Or could he?

  I had to get back! God, I had to get back!

  When the white sun had set and the red sun glowed a darkening ember across the Sierra, a summons came, brought by one of Karamy’s toy-soldier cohorts. I dressed—in crimson again, for there was no other clothing anywhere—and followed the voiceless sentry down through a labyrinth of elevators, finally emerging into a long corridor. I strode down it, hearing my own steps echo; a second rhythm joined them imperceptibly, and Gamine stole out of the darkness, swathed in the luminous veiling, creeping noiselessly as a ghost behind me. Later I became conscious of Evarin’s padding cat-steps behind Gamine, trailing us, single-file. And other figures came from darkened recesses to stretch the silent parade; a slim girl in a winged cloak, flame color; a dwarfed man who walked beneath the amethyst huddle of purple cap and furs. Memory fitted names to them, but I did not speak to them, or they to me.

  After a long time, the immense corridor began to tilt upward, climbing toward a glimmer of light at the end. Without realizing it I had swung into an arrogant, loping stride; now I brushed away the slave-soldier who headed the column and took the lead myself. Behind me the others fell into place as if I had bidden them; the flame-clothed girl in the winged cloak, the cat-footed Evarin, the dwarf bent in his jester’s cap, Gamine in the blue shroud. Without warning, we came out into a vast court; an enclosed space, yet wide as the outdoors, a yard, a plaza, a place of imposing grandeur. A place of memory.

  The red sun above us glowed like a lurid coal. There were tall pillars on three sides of the courtyard, and at the far end, a vaulted archway led into a treelined drive that stretched away for miles into the twilight. Between two pillars, Karamy waited; slim, shimmering golden from head to foot. A hungry impatience sparked in her cat’s eyes. “You’re late.”

  “I’m ready,” I said. What I was ready for, I was not sure.

  Karamy waved an impatient signal to the Narabedlans who were coming up. “Adric is with us again,” she said in her curious lazy voice, “Your allegiance to Adric—children of the Rainbow!”

  I stood at her side, mute, waiting; a guard of silent men behind us. “Lord Idris;” Karamy summoned. The hunchback came to bow jerkily before us. “Welcome home—Lord!”

  The girl in flame-color darted to where we stood and her dipping curtsy was like the waver of a moth toward a flame. “Adric—” she murmured. The wings of her cloak lifted and fluttered across her shoulders as if they would fly of themselves. She was a shy thing, and her dark hair waved softly as if it too were winged. I touched her fingers lightly, but under the smolder of Karamy’s gaze I let her go. She watched me, shyly, with averted face.

  Evarin’s face was slyly malicious, but his voice was pure silk. “It is—pleasure to follow you again, my brother,” he almost purred, and I scowled at the mockery at his face and refused his offered hand. Only Gamine said nothing, coming forward on gliding feet to bow briefly and retire; but the silver-sweet, sexless voice of the spell-singer murmured in a singing, almost wordless, croon.

  “Save your spells, Gamine,” said Karamy savagely, and Evarin jerked round at the shrouded form, but Gamine heeded neither of them, and the sweet contralto chanting went on.

  From somewhere the silent men brought horses. Horses—here, in this nightmare world? I had never been on a horse in my life. I found myself vaulting, with a nice co-ordination of movement, into the saddle. The courtyard, for all the bustle of department, seemed to hold the silence of a grave. Karamy kept me close to her. When we were all mounted, she threw the amber rod upward, and the last rays of the red sun caught its rays and sent a pure shaft of light down the darkened alleyway lined with trees. At the sight of that gleam, a curiously familiar emotion stole through me. I threw up one arm over my head, mimicking Karamy’s gesture. “Ride!” I shouted.

  And the flying steeds kept pace with mine.

  The driveway under the arch of trees led for miles under the thick boughs. Through the easy drumming of hooves, I could still hear the sweet distant sound of Gamine’s singing, which floated on the wind, keeping pace with the rise and fall of the rolling road, in a quick cadence. The wind whipped Karamy’s golden hair like a halo about her head. I glanced over my shoulder to where the rainbow towers stood, now black, silhouetted against the greater darkness of the mountains. Overhead in the pink sky, the crescent of the tiny moon was brightening, and lower in the sky I saw another, wider disc, nearly at full. Cold air was stinging my cheeks and nipping my bones with frost, and I felt the sparks struck from hooves beating on the frozen ground.

  Cold! Yet in Karamy’s garden flowers had glowed in a tropical glory—

  And for a moment, it was entirely Mike Kenscott—sick, bewildered and panicky—who glanced about him with horror, feeling the swirling cold and a colder chill from the golden sorceress at my side. It was Mike Kenscott’s will that jerked at the reins of the big gelding to end this farce now—

  “What is it?” Karamy cried, over the noise of the hooves.

  And I heard my own voice, raised above the galloping rhythm, cry back “Nothing!” and call out a command to the horse.

  Good God! I was Mike Kenscott—but prisoner in a body that would not obey me—a mind that persisted in thoughts and habits I could not share, a—soul?—that would carry me to destruction! I was Mike Kenscott—trapped on a nightmare ride through hell!

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Where the Dreamer Walks

  I had been scared before. Now I was panicked, wild with a nerve-destroying fright. I’m not a coward. I set up a rada
r transmitter in Okinawa within ninety feet of a nest of Japs. That was something real. I could face it. But under two suns and a pair of little moons, with weird people I knew were not human—all right; I was a coward. I steadied myself in the saddle, trying with every scrap of my will to calm myself. If this was a nightmare, well, I’d had some beauties—

  But it wasn’t. I knew that. The frost hurting my face, the sound of shod steel on stones, the vivid colors around me, told me I was wide awake. Dreams are not techni-colored. And through all this I was riding hell-for-leather, my knees gripped on the saddle, guiding the horse with the grip of my thighs—and I’d never been on a horse’s back in my life. Rode—and rode—

  We had ridden about seven miles, and stopped twice to breathe the horses, but we were still beneath the great archway of trees. The sky’s pink sunset light had faded; the land was flooded with a blue, fluorescent starlight, a light I’d never seen before. I strained my eyes upward through the black foliage. I suppose I had some confused idea of guessing when I was by the stars. But the view to the North was hidden by mountains, and I don’t know one constellation from another, with that single exception. A glance at Karamy, in this fright, un-nerved me; I touched the reins, dropped back till I rode between Gamine and the girl in flame-color. “Adric,” the spell-singer saluted coolly, and the girl in the winged cloak threw back her hood; I saw dark eyes watching me from a pure, sweet young face. Before the luminous innocence of those eyes I wanted to cry out in protest. I was not Adric, warlock of Narabedla. I was just a poor guy named Mike, I was just—me. I rode beside Gamine for minutes, trying to think what I would say.

  Gamine’s musical voice was not raised, yet it carried perfectly to my ears. “You seem wholly yourself again.”

  I didn’t answer. What was there to say? Still, there seemed to be sympathy in the sharply-edged tones. “You will remember—perhaps too much—at the Dreamer’s Keep.”

  “Gamine,” I asked, “Who is Narayan?”

  I saw the blue robes quiver a little; across from Gamine, I saw a curious flickering look pass across the face of the girl in the orange winged cloak. But Gamine’s answer was perfectly even and disinterested. “The name is not familiar to me. Have you heard it, Cynara?”

  The girl did not answer, only moved her dark head a little.

  “I should know,” I mused. But the name Cynara had touched another of those live wires within my mind. Narayan. Cynara. Cynara and Narayan! If I could only remember! Suddenly I turned. “Gamine—who are you?” Gamine sat quiet, eerily motionless on the tall horse. The robed figure seemed to blend into the starlit shadows around us. I had the sudden feeling of having re-lived this moment before, then the veiled shoulders twitched impatiently.

  “Is this an inquisition?”

  Rebuked, and stung by the arrogant voice, I touched my heel to my horse’s flank and rode forward to rejoin Karamy. Gamine! The hell with Gamine!

  For several minutes the road had been climbing, and now we topped the summit of a little rise and abruptly the trees came to an end. By tacit consent we all drew our horses to a walk. We stood atop the lip of a broad bowl of land, perhaps thirty miles across, filled to the brim with thick dark forest. Far out in this valley lay a cleared space, and in the center of that space lay a great tower; but not a slender and fairylike spire like the Towers of Rainbow City. This was a massive donjon thrusting heavy shoulders upward into the moon-washed sky.

  The Keep of the Dreamers.

  Something in me murmured, “This is the forest where the Dreamer walks!”—or had the murmured voice come from Gamine, motionless behind me? Karamy rode eagerly, her face drawn tautly together, her slim tanned hands clenched on the reins. All this while I was Mike Kenscott—but a Mike who watched himself without knowing what he would do next, like those puzzling nightmares where a man is both actor and audience to some mummery being played. I watched myself say and do things as if I were two men at once. In effect, I suppose I was.… Karamy turned in her saddle, facing me.

  “Adric,” she murmured, “Lead me where the Dreamer walks!”

  I knew, with a sudden surety, that because of some bond between the freed Dreamer and myself, I could do this. But again, something outside myself told me what to say. “That bond is broken, Karamy. Did you not break it yourself? How can I guide you then?” And for my reward I saw unsureness leap in her cat’s eyes. That shot had told. Karamy had been guessing, then!

  The answer had shaken her. But this woman was a past mistress at subtlety. She murmured, “It can be forged again. That I swear.”

  Ah, but I knew how far to trust even Karamy’s oaths!

  We had dipped down into the bowl of forest and we were riding through thick woods, along a road that struggled windingly, with many curves and sharp corners. Adric knew this country; his knowledge made Mike Kenscott shiver. He had hunted here, and for no fourlegged game. As if Karamy read my thoughts I hear her low laughter. “So. My wrist aches for the feel of a falcon. We’ll hunt here again—soon, you and I!” I was partly bewildered by her words, but they gave me a shivering excitement, an insidious thrill.

  Behind me, I heard Gamine’s chanting take on a new note. The words were still indistinguishable, but the very tune screamed warning. A pulse began to twitch jerkily in my neck.

  Without any warning, the road twisted. Karamy and I spurred our horses and rounded the curve in one swift, racing burst of speed—and were fairly in the trap before we knew it.

  It was the agonized whinny of my horse, and the jolt of my body righting itself automatically from the plunging animal beneath me, that made me realize we had ridden straight on a chevaux-de-frise. I yelled, cursing, shouting to Karamy to get back, get back, but her own momentum carried her on; I saw her light body fly out of the saddle and disappear. The others, rounding the curve in a wild dash, were fairly on the barrier already, and the place was a bedlam, a scramble, with riderless horses milling in a melee of curses and the screaming of women and the threshing of feet. I was out of my saddle in an instant, thrusting Gamine’s mount back from the stabbing points fixed invisibly against the dark barrier in the road, shouting to Evarin and Idris. Evarin leaped to my side, catching at Karamy’s wild horse, while I tore madly at the barrier where the woman had been thrown. Idris bore down on me, mounted. “Go round!” he shouted. I plunged through the underbrush at the side of the road, with hasty feet twice snaked by long creepers. Past the barrier, the road lay open and deserted, and Karamy lay in a shimmer of crumpled silk, motionless. “Gamine, Evarin—” I bellowed, “No one’s here! Quick, Karamy is hurt—”

  The head and shoulders of Idris’ horse thrust through the thick brushwood. “Is she dead?” the dwarf muttered. I bent, thrusting my hand to her breasts. “Her heart’s beating. Only stunned. Get down,” I ordered. Idris scrambled, monkey-fashion, from the saddle. I lifted the woman in my arms, but she did not move or open her eyes. Idris touched my arm.

  “Put her on the saddle,” he suggested, and together we laid her across the pommel. Suddenly, the dwarf cried out.

  “What?” I asked sharply.

  “I hear—”

  I never knew what Idris heard. His head vanished, as if snatched away by a giant’s hand; a rough grip collared me, choking fingers clawed at my throat, a thousand rockets went off in my head and I lay sprawling in the brushwood, eating dust, with an elephant sitting on my chest and threatening hands gouging my throat. My last coherent thought before the breath went out of me, was—

  “I’m waking up!”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Narayan

  But I wasn’t. When I came to—it could only have been a few seconds that I was unconscious—it was to hear Evarin snarling curses and Idris barking incoherently with rage. I heard Karamy screaming my name, and started to answer, but the steely fingers were still at my throat and with that weight on top of me, I hadn’t a chance. The fall, or something, had knocked Adric clean out of me. I was fuzzy-brained, but sane. I was an innocent bystander again.
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  I could see Evarin and Idris in the road, casting wary glances at the brushwood all around them. I could just make out the face of the man who was holding me pinned to the earth with his body. He had the general build of a hippopotamus and a face to match. I squirmed, but the threatening face came closer and I subsided. The man could have broken me in two like a match.

  Around me in the thicket were dozens of crouching forms, fantastic snipers with weapons at their shoulders. Weapons that could have been crossbows or disintegrators, or both. “Enter Buck Rogers,” I thought wearily. I was beginning to feel faint again, and old welter-weight on my stomach didn’t help any. Abruptly he moved, delicate fingers knotting a gag in my gasping mouth; then the intolerable weight on my chest was suddenly gone and I sucked in air with relief. The fat man eased himself cautiously up, and I felt a steel point caress my lowest rib. The threat didn’t need words. I could see the Narabedlans gathered, a tight little knot in the road. The snipers around me were still holding their weapons, but the fat man commanded in a low voice “Don’t fire! They’re sure to have guards riding behind them—” the voice died to a rasping mutter, and I lay motionless, trying to dredge up some of Adric’s memories that might help; but the only thing I got was a fleeting memory of my own football days and a flying tackle by a Penn State halfback that had knocked me ten feet. Adric was gone; clean gone.

  The Narabedlans were talking in low tones, Gamine the rallying-point round which they clustered. Evarin had his sword out, but even he did not step toward the mantling thicket. Cynara was holding Evarin’s arm, protesting wildly. “No, no, no, no! They’ll kill Adric—”

  Suddenly, between two breaths, the road was alive with mounted men. Who they were, I never knew; I was quickly dragged to my feet and jerked away. Behind me I heard shouting, and steel, and saw thin flashes of colored flame. Spots of black danced before my eyes as I stumbled along between two captors. I felt my sword dragged from my scabbard. Oh well, I thought wryly, now that Adric’s run out on the party I don’t know how to use it anyway.